Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Octavia Spencer and many others would like to thank the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today, for their invitations to join the elite organization. We assume they would, anyway.

According toThe Hollywood Reporter, the Academy has invited 176 artists and executives to join them, and this year, the group of invitees is more "eclectic" than ever. Academy president Tom Sherak reported that one goal with the 2012 invitees was diversity, as well as deservedness; they wanted to include more women and more ethnicities.

“It is progress,” Sherak told the L.A. Times. “Fourteen percent [of the invitees are people of color] is up from [4 percent] last year. You have to have the qualifications to get in. It's not easy to find especially in the age groups we are talking about, which are naturally older. So I'm happy it went up, but what we have to ensure is that the people who get in deserve to be in the academy. That's decided by the branches, not the academy.”